50 Years Ago: A Look Back at 1965

A half-century ago, the war in Vietnam was escalating, the space race was in full swing, the Rolling Stones were on a world tour, the bravery of those who marched to Selma led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the St. Louis Arch was completed. The United States occupied the Dominican Republic, Malcolm X was assassinated, NASA's Mariner 4 flew by Mars, race riots erupted in Watts, California, and Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston. Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a photographic look back at the year 1965.

During the Gemini 4 mission on June 3, 1965, Ed White became the first American to conduct a spacewalk. The spacewalk started at 3:45 p.m. EDT on the third orbit when White opened the hatch and used the hand-held maneuvering oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule. The EVA started over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and lasted 23 minutes, ending over the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, White propelled himself to the end of the 8-meter tether and back to the spacecraft three times using the hand-held gun. After the first three minutes the fuel ran out and White maneuvered by twisting his body and pulling on the tether. In this photograph taken by Commander James McDivitt early in the EVA over a cloud-covered Pacific Ocean, the maneuvering gun is visible in White's right hand.#

The heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali stands over the fallen challenger Sonny Liston, shouting and gesturing shortly after dropping Liston with a short hard right to the jaw on May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine. The bout lasted only one minute into the first round.#

Spectators divide their attention as the Mount Hermon High School football team in Massachusetts hosts Deerfield Academy during a structure fire in the Mount Hermon science building on November 24, 1965. The science building was destroyed, and Mount Hermon lost the football game, ending a two-year-long winning streak.#

A reception dress (left) made of green fancy-colored chiffon, with pants instead of gown, and wide flounces, and an after-ski of violet wool complete with gloves and stockings, handmade of sky-blue wool (right). These are two creations by the Alberto Fabiani fashion house of Rome and Paris, presented at the Florence show of Italian spring and summer fashions in Italy, on January 18, 1965.#

Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office during his second inauguration ceremony in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1965. Administering the oath is Chief Justice Earl Warren, right. Holding the Bible at center is Lady Bird Johnson, beginning a new tradition.#

Wilson Baker (left), the Selma, Alabama, director of public safety, holds up his hand in front of Martin Luther King Jr., on February 1, 1965, to tell him that he and his followers, about 250 of them, were under arrest for parading without a permit.#

From left: George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon of the Beatles on their hotel terrace in Milan, Italy, with Il Duomo Cathedral in the background before their show at the Velodromo Vigorelli on June 24, 1965.#

Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine-gun fire into tree lines to cover the advance of Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, Vietnam, on March 29, 1965, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border.#

Daughters and sons of Washington diplomats swing in the staid East Room of the White House in Washington, on June 18, 1965. They were guests of Luci Johnson, the 17-year-old daughter of the president.#

The sail-like shells that form the roof of Sydney’s massive Opera House take shape and dwarf a ferry cruising in Sydney Cove, an arm of Sydney Harbor, Australia, on June 19, 1965. The Opera House was completed in 1973.#

British Naval Officers stand vigil by the coffin of Sir Winston Churchill at Westminster Hall, London, before his funeral. Churchill died on January 24, 1965, at the age of 90, shortly after suffering a stroke. He was buried with full state honors on January 30.#

State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. John Lewis, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (in the foreground) is being beaten by state troopers. Lewis would go on to become a U.S. congressman, elected as the representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district in 1986.#

In this March 7, 1965, file photo, clouds of tear gas fill the air as state troopers, ordered by Gov. George Wallace, break up a demonstration march in Selma, Alabama, on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." The incident is widely credited for galvanizing the nation's leaders and ultimately yielded passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.#

The second XB70A triplesonic research plane rolls out the final assembly hangar before the eyes of several thousand spectators, most of them employees of North American Aviation and their families at the company's Palmdale, California, plant, on May 29, 1965.#

Seventeen-year-old Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), New York City's basketball wonder of the high-school hardwood circuit, runs through workout in preparation for tournament play on February 17, 1965 in New York. The 7-foot-1 star has received numerous offers from colleges and even the pros say he's one of the hottest players to come along since Wilt Chamberlain.#

This September 1965 file photo shows four "Ranch Hand" C-123 aircraft spraying liquid defoliant on a suspected Viet Cong position in South Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, Air Force C-123 planes sprayed millions of gallons of herbicides over the jungles of Southeast Asia to destroy enemy crops and tree cover. The military stopped the spraying by early 1971, but some Air Force Reserve units continued to fly the former spray planes until the early 1980s.#

Followers tend to Malcolm X as he lies mortally wounded on the stage of the Audubon ballroom in Harlem after being shot on February 21, 1965. In March of 1964, Malcolm X announced a break with the Nation of Islam, leading to conflict, threats, and his assassination here. Three members of the Nation of Islam were tried and convicted of the killing.#

Thousands attend a rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington on April 17, 1965, to hear Ernest Gruening, a Democratic senator from Alaska, and other speakers discuss U.S. policy in Vietnam. The rally followed picketing of the White House by students demanding an end to Vietnam fighting.#

Vietnamese soldiers prepare the Viet Cong terrorist Le Dau, 24, for execution at Da Nang, on April 15, 1965. He was executed after being convicted of attempting to blow up a hotel occupied by Americans in Da Nang on April 4.#

Klan Rally. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan march in a circle around a 50-foot burning cross on June 6, 1965, as approximately 2,500 watched the closing ceremony of the rally near Trenton, North Carolina.#

Demonstrators make a dash through police lines for school buses in an attempt to get on the buses with white children in Crawfordville, Georgia, on October 7, 1965. The state patrolmen grabbed them and held them in custody until the buses drove away. The protesters were demanding to ride the buses and school integration.#

Mike Hailwood, the golden boy of British motor-cycling, is seen in action during the 500 cc Senior Tourist Trophy race over the rain-soaked mountain circuit on the Isle of Man, U.K., on June 18, 1965, which he won on an Italian MV machine.#

From their Cadillac, Jack Carrigan (inside car) and Louis Miller Bailey, watch their two Egyptian servants clear away small stones in front of their retirement home at Giza, Egypt, on February 16, 1965. In the background are the famed 3,500-year-old pyramids which are their neighbors. The two men retired from Hollywood, California, to Egypt because they were tired of the film capital's "lurid industrialization."#

A shoe store in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California, collapses in flames as the city's wave of violence moves into its fourth day, August 14, 1965. Years of segregation and mistreatment erupted into a week-long race riot.#

The massive job of cleaning up the black section of Los Angeles through which riots surged for five days gets underway as a bulldozer clears debris from a fire-gutted store off the sidewalk in Watts, Los Angeles, August 18, 1965.#

This is the wind tunnel of the French National Institute for aerospace research in France, on July 16, 1965. It shows a scale model of the Franco-British jet transport plane Concorde, going through tests in heavy wind pressure during landing phase. The tourbillions are photographed at the trailing wings. The fuselage (white circle) is illuminated, thus allowing the picture to be taken.#

Riggers work at the New York World’s Fair in New York on October 21, 1965, to dismantle the Brontosaurus which has been on exhibit at the Sinclair Pavilion. The pre-historic animal replica will be reassembled and is scheduled to go on tour.#

Mrs. Miki Sawada, the granddaughter of the founder of the Mitsubishi industrial empire in Japan, poses in Los Angeles with six of her now-grown "GI babies," who are heading for a new life in Brazil. They stopped briefly in Los Angeles on the trip from Japan on July 22, 1965. They are the abandoned children of American soldiers and Japanese girls, disliked by Japanese because of their mixed ancestry.#

A Dominican army guard at the National Palace is photographed the instant he shoots and kills a high school student (arms raised) protesting U.S. Army presence in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on September 27, 1965. In April of 1965, the United States occupied the Dominican Republic during the Dominican Civil War, holding it for more than a year.#

New York City during a massive blackout as seen from Long Island City on November 9, 1965. The buildings with lights have emergency power generators. Nearly 30 million in the Northeast were left without power for 13 hours following a series of errors that led to the blackout.#

Captain Donald R. Brown of Annapolis, Maryland, the advisor to the 2nd Battalion of the 46th Vietnamese regiment, dashes from his helicopter to the cover of a rice paddy dike during an attack on Viet Cong in an area 15 miles west of Saigon on April 4, 1965, during the Vietnam War. Brown's counterpart, Captain Di, the commander of the unit, rushes away in background with his radioman.#

Martin Luther King Jr., center foreground, walks in vanguard of a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 persons who gathered in downtown Chicago, on July 26, 1965, to protest segregation in the city's schools.#

Antoine Senni (center) is surrounded by friends as he emerges from Olivier Cave near Nice, France, on April 5, 1965, after spending 125 days alone without a timepiece or calendar in a scientific experiment to determine the effect of such solitude on the human mind and body. Josy Laurey (right), a nurse, spent 88 days in the same operation earlier in the year. Michel Siffre (top left) headed the operation.#

The space monkey Baker shown during a press conference in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 29, 1965, after his successful flight in the nose-cone of the Jupiter Rocket over Atlantic firing range, 1,500 miles from Cape Canaveral. He and his monkey companion Able were recovered near the island of Antigua. The monkey Baker is being held by Donald Stullken.#

An African American youth demonstrator involved in a sitdown at a private dining club is flipped to the ground by a white man (right) after dragging the protester from the front of the entrance of the club at Crawfordville, Georgia, on October 2, 1965. The sign in background says “A Dixie Welcome to Crawfordville.”#

Screaming, this fan raced across the tarmac towards the plane that brought in the British singing group the Rolling Stones to Australia on January 28, 1965, at Melbourne Airport. Police soon had her back on the other side of the barrier. About 1,500 teenagers, 40 policemen, and 25 security patrolmen were at the airport for the arrival.#

A South Vietnamese soldier, right, punches the face of a suspected Viet Cong guerrilla during an operation in Quang Nam province, 10 miles southwest of Da Nang, on March 28, 1965. Two battalions of Vietnamese troops took 30 prisoners, including 13 described as hard-core Viet Cong, and killed five others.#

A woman touches up her lipstick with the help of a huge parabolic mirror which is part of the West German research satellite, 625-B, being assembled in a plant in Munich, West Germany, on February 26, 1965. The mirror is a component of the unit's heat engine, concentrating solar radiation onto the absorber of a generator.#